stem cells
UCSF scientists have discovered that a tiny filament extending from cells, until recently regarded as a remnant of evolution, may play a role in the most common malignant brain tumor in children.
A study from the Center for Molecular Genetics at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine shows that a gene called HPRT plays an important role in setting the program by which primitive or precursor cells decide to become normal nerve cells in the human brain.
There is no known cure for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But new hope, in the form of stem cells created from the patient's own bone marrow, can be found ― and literally seen ― in laboratories at Tel Aviv University.
NEW YORK -- Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center's Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a protein that activates brain stem cells to make new neurons -- but that may be hijacked later in life to cause brain cancer in humans.
Pediatric researchers have resolved an apparent contradiction in the field of prenatal cell transplantation -- a medical approach that holds future promise in correcting sickle cell disease and other serious congenital blood disorders.
The cancer stem cells that drive tumor growth and resist chemotherapies and radiation treatments that kill other cancer cells aren't invincible after all. Researchers reporting online on August 13th in the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, have discovered the first compound that targets those cancer stem cells directly.
p>CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (August 13, 2009) -- A novel technique allows researchers to efficiently and precisely modify or introduce genes into the genomes of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, according to Whitehead scientists.
Although open-heart surgery is a frequent treatment for heart disease, it remains extremely dangerous. Now groundbreaking research from Dr. Britta Hardy of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine has shown the potential for an injected protein to regrow blood vessels in the human heart ― eliminating the need for risky surgery altogether.
University of Central Florida researchers have shown for the first time that light energy can gently guide and change the orientation of living cells within lab cultures. That ability to optically steer cells could be a major step in harnessing the healing power of stem cells and guiding them to areas of the body that need help.
MADISON -- In an advance that could help transform embryonic stem cells into a multipurpose medical tool, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have transformed these versatile cells into progenitors of white blood cells and into six types of mature white blood and immune cells.
BOSTON (August 10, 2009) -- In a study published online in advance of print in Stem Cells, Tufts researchers report that the STAT3 gene regulates cancer stem cells in brain cancer. Cancer stem cells have many characteristics of stem cells and are thought to be the cells that drive tumor formation.
STANFORD, Calif. -- For the past eight years, scientists who wanted to use federal funds for research on human embryonic stem cells had to restrict their studies to 21 cell lines approved by the National Institutes of Health. But an analysis by a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that only two of those lines have been used routinely.
LA JOLLA, Calif., August 6, 2009 -- Investigators at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have made the first comparative, large-scale phosphoproteomic analysis of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and their differentiated derivatives.
Johns Hopkins scientists have tracked down a powerful set of cells in bladder tumors that seem to be primarily responsible for the cancer's growth and spread using a technique that takes advantage of similarities between tumor and organ growth.
The promise of stem cell therapy may lie in uncovering how adult cells revert back into a primordial, stem cell state, whose fate is yet to be determined. Now, cell scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have identified key molecular players responsible for this reversion in fruit fly sperm cells.
